


together we grow wild

by foxbones



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, daemon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 21:57:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7378912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxbones/pseuds/foxbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma’s not sure when it became so clear that she was in...<i>something</i> with Regina, but it might have started with Max pricking his ears in the presence of Basilio, circling the jaguar with all the expectant energy of a pup. </p><p>or, the one where they have daemons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. fur, teeth

**Author's Note:**

> you do not need to be familiar with the daemons of the his dark materials 'verse to understand this fic, but long story short: daemons are animals who represent our souls, and live outside our body as distinct individuals. this takes place some time post-robin break-up and mid-marian situation. i honestly have not watched the show in so long and with such little investment that i couldn't tell you where exactly that is, but it doesn't really matter, so.
> 
> i nerded out and assigned daemons for the whole gang. for the curious:
> 
> regina - jaguar named basilio, _italian and spanish, ”king”_  
>  henry - unsettled named almira, _spanish, ”princess”_  
>  snow - snowshoe hare named waldemar, _old german name, “rule, great”_  
>  charming - fallow deer named elain, _welsh, “fawn”_  
>  belle - stoat named amaury, _french, “hard-working”_  
>  rumple - green iguana named gudrun, _old norse and german, “gods’ secret lore”_  
>  hook - ring-billed gull named laverna, _in roman mythology, laverna was the goddess of thieves and con men_  
>  robin - red kite named elvina, _old english, “companion of elves”_  
>  marian - cacomistle named balli, _belizean kriol, “friend”_  
>  cora - banded krait named alarico, _spanish, “all-powerful”_  
>  and last but not least  
> emma - coyote named max (maximus), _greek, “savior”_
> 
> listen to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuKRne72zMA) while you read.

 

 

 

 

Emma’s not sure when it became so clear that she was in... _something_ with Regina, but it might have started with Max pricking his ears in the presence of Basilio, circling the jaguar with all the expectant energy of a pup. 

“ _Maximus_ ,” she hisses, uses his name like a mother chastising a child, but the headstrong nature they share wins out. He’s sniffing excitedly in the general direction of the jaguar and his human, and Emma is kneading her brow and trying to pretend that only a few years before, the coyote wasn’t snarling at Basilio, taking his aggressive stance at even their scent. Max’s memory may be short, and hell, she’s no gift to brain power either, but it isn’t exactly subtle, this kind of goddamned display.

Luckily, Henry is there and Almira has shifted from a sparrow at his shoulder to a collie, intercepting Max. She bounds towards him, tail in the air, and Max gives her a gentle nip on the ear. 

“Hey Ma,” Henry says, and it’s never not going to be strange, this kid cleaved to her side in his sudden, overwhelming way. She wants to say that it’s natural, having him in her life again, but there’s no shape of him in her bones, no memories in her blood. She remembers his birth by the way they took him from her arms; not the weight of him against her chest, but the sudden lightness when he was gone. Anything they’ve become since their reunion is based on what they are to each other now and she likes that, the way motherhood didn’t come to her as an instinct but was instead something she had to trip over and fall into and learn how to maneuver. Emma doesn’t want it to be easy with Henry all the time because he’s important to her, and the most important things in her life are the ones that give her the most trouble.

Speaking of which --

“Miss Swan,” Regina says, and nods in her direction. The jaguar’s tail switches.

“Hey,” Emma says. Max blinks at Basilio, his ears back.

From the farthest table of the diner, Hook lifts a hand, Laverna flapping at his shoulder. If he notices the way Emma’s breath is caught in her throat, if Laverna can plainly see that Max throws his head in the direction of the jaguar, they say nothing.

 

 

 

 

It’s not _bad_ , the kissing part. Killian’s not the worst at whatever this physical thing is they’re doing, and he doesn’t care that sometimes she calls him Hook and sometimes, rarely, she calls him Killian. If she’s said other names in her sleep, he’s never mentioned it. She doesn’t know why she’s convinced that it’s happened, but sometimes she’ll look across the street or the diner or the table she shares with her son and his mother and she just --

Max is pushing his nose into her hand, his head bumping her knee under the table.

“Hey,” he says, and there’s a reminder in his voice, his chin against her calf. Max is only careful when she isn’t. It’s how daemons work, she guesses, or maybe she just got lucky. Bounty hunting was easier when you’ve got a coyote without a conscience or a meter for stupid decisions. Not that it hasn’t gotten them both in trouble; the scars on his muzzle, the nicked ear, the white lines hidden under his fur, are all mirrors of her own. She’s just a little better at hiding them.

Once, she is in the Bug with Regina, and they’re talking about something like Henry’s adjustment to normal life or a curse that’s making everyone burst into song at inappropriate times, and Regina says that thing about scars.

“It’s a curse of its own,” Regina says, her hands clasped in her lap. “Having your own body as a reminder.”

“Yeah,” Emma says too quickly, and she rubs at her own shoulder, thinking about the scar from a bullet that had nicked her rib, the parts of her skin she’s refused to everyone who has ever shared her bed. It’s not that she wants to talk about the faint line above Regina’s lip, it’s not that she thinks if Regina could run her finger down the nicks of Emma’s spine that it would _do_ something, _fix_ something, but --

And then they change the subject, either with a new argument or Regina making some comment about the way Hook smells like low tide. Basilio moves away from Max, chin upright, and that’s that. Emma assumes that queens in fairy tales are trained to cut conversations short whenever they please. Emma’s used to stumbling over her words and forgetting where she put her car keys.

 

 

 

 

“I worry about her,” Henry says. He’s at that age where he’s pretending to be an adult but he doesn’t realize it yet. Almira has been a lynx for a half hour already, following Max with her eyes. They are sitting on the curb outside of Snow and Charming’s, waiting for Regina to pick him up. Inside, Leopold is crying. 

“Your mom can handle anything.” Emma ruffles his hair, a gesture she learned from foster brothers who were a foot taller than her and prone to fights on her behalf. “I’m pretty sure she could fight a war every day without a problem.”

“But she shouldn’t have to.”

“Yeah,” and Max gives Almira a nudge with his nose. “Wise beyond your years, as usual.”

The Mercedes glides up and Regina stays in the car. They make eye contact through the glass, and Regina doesn’t smile, just nods and lifts a few fingers from the wheel. Her jaguar is sitting erect behind her seat.

“It’ll never get easier with her, will it?” Max says, once Henry’s in the passenger seat and they’re driving away.

“Good thing we don’t like ‘em easy.” She snorts when Max tosses his head. “I’m joking, obviously.”

“Sure,” he says, and nips at her pantleg. “Sure you are.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They had separated first when she was young, too young, tears licking the dust from her cheeks, a knife of obsidian in her right fist. Basilio, as of yet unsettled, shifted nervously from raven to ocelot to a tiny shrew that crawled into her pocket. Alarico was coiled around her mother’s arm, slitted eyes unblinking. The sun glinted off his scales, black and gold, and he adjusted his coils lazily, as if their venture into the barren land was merely routine.

“You will need him to be able to do this,” Cora said, and Regina could feel Basilio quivering against her. “It is what magic asks of us, _querida_. It is the only way.”

“Please,” Regina whispered, and she felt the daemon’s heartbeat near to her own, too fast.

She remembers the pause before her mother took the knife from her hand, and the look that had passed between the two of them, the way she had met Cora’s eyes and known.

“Never doubt that I do what’s best for you,” Cora had said, and the knife had come down.

She will never forget the scream, from her or from Basilio or from the both of them, together. She felt her body snap in half like a bone, sheer and brutal.

Over the years, it would be easier. Basilio could go away now for long turns, and there would be no pain in her ribcage, no sudden violent pulls of phantom muscles and claws. The only time they shared pain was in magic, through the dark work of war and annihilation that had felt so urgent and necessary in the old world.

She can still taste the fire of those spells, the _sting_ \--

\-- Basilio’s fur wet and too hot in her hand, rock and sea and blood on her tongue.

Later, they would wake in her chambers, ash in the jaguar’s coat. Basilio would nuzzle her elbow, and she’d set her jaw, let the tears fall in silence.

 

 

 

 

And even after all this it grows exhausting, the way they stare at her in the store or on the street, Snow with that rabbit and its accusatory eyes, the nervous little defiances of her daemon in spite of her smiles, her waves and greetings. Her husband’s deer, neck stiff and upright in Basilio’s presence, always standing at Charming’s flank. The infant’s daemon a tiny fawn on stilt legs, staggering at the feet of his father or curling up as a mouse in his mother’s hand.

“I wonder if they ever notice the irony.” Basilio is cleaning his paws, his claws spread. “Being settled as prey, when we are predators.”

Regina snorts. “I’m sure they think it’s noble, all that doe-eyed vulnerability.”

Basilio gives her a look.

“Pun entirely unintentional,” she says, and he swats her with his tail.

 

 

 

 

There was a time when they could walk through the Enchanted Forest, forcing knees to the ground. She remembers the way it felt, as if the whole world was splitting itself open for her. It felt inevitable, thrilling though damning, and it’s not until she has the language of the new world that she can assign a description to it -- like a train on a track, barreling towards a wall.

And then she remembers a time before that, when Basilio could always run fast enough to keep up with the horses, when no one trembled at the sound of her voice. She was barefoot in the grass. When she opened her hands, they were only hands. She can’t remember what it felt like, but she knows it was there, its imprint so clear in her heart that she could trace its outline with a finger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her parents can only raise an eyebrow at the prospect of magic lessons -- Snow makes a comment about all the time Regina must have on her hands, now that Marian’s back and Robin’s gone and that big house is so empty, isn’t it -- and so Emma goes, meets Regina in the forest on the edge of town.

“You’ve gotten better,” Regina says. Basilio is seated beside her, his velvety black haunches pressed against her calves. 

“I try.” Emma’s doubled over, the sheer effort of pushing her light against Regina’s enough to make her feel like she’s run a marathon and come in last. Max pants at her side, hiding his exhaustion from the jaguar. 

“Does the sea scum mind you practicing with me?”

Emma ignores the implications. “I don’t really care if he does or not.” She makes two fists, and there are a few faint blue sparks between her knuckles, nothing too impressive. The jaguar pricks his ears, though.

“Your romance is truly inspiring.”

“At least it can still be mistaken for that.”

Regina’s expression is difficult to read. “Is that a barb at my own situation?”

“I didn’t think you still had a situation.”

Regina’s palms light up and her lip curls, but Emma’s sparks are flying from her fingers now, brighter than they’ve ever been.

The sparks don’t say that she hasn’t slept with Hook in three weeks and every time he shows up at the diner, she’s scared of how much she feels nothing, of how looks from him are like bullets fired at the last legs of their relationship, too far from the finish line. The sparks don’t say that she closes her eyes when he kisses the side of her mouth and that she used to fuck him like there was a bag over her head and no way out.

The sparks don’t say that she wasn’t sorry to see Regina turn her face from Robin’s, that Marian put her hand into the hand of her husband and Emma couldn’t tell the difference between the guilt and the relief in her gut. The sparks don’t say that the curved line of Regina’s hip and waist could tie a knot around Emma’s throat, and she’d still find a way to breathe. The sparks don’t say that loneliness can bind as well as it breaks.

Emma unclenches her fists, and there’s brilliant blue light there, twin fires with a bright white center. Max’s eyes have glazed over to silver, magic in his body just as it is in hers. 

Regina steps back, that look on her face unmistakable. “I don’t think we should do this anymore,” she says, her voice so careful that Emma wonders if this is what the Evil Queen sounded like, back when she still had a kingdom. “Clearly you’ve learned all I can teach you, and further lessons would be useless.”

 _Fuck._ “Regina, I--”

But Regina is retreating into the woods, only the flash of a shoulder or hand visible through the trees. Basilio stays seated in front of Emma and Max, his eyes sliding over from silver to bright gold, and then he follows his human, tail switching hotly.

 

 

 

 

“We’re supposed to be able to do this.”

“Says you.” Max is sitting on his haunches on the pebbly beach, observing her futile march into the tide. “I’m not exactly sprinting headfirst down the road to excruciating pain.”

“I thought you’d be into the whole magic thing.”

“I am,” he says, and then gives a yelp of surprise when she steps too far into the water. The restraints they constructed from three dog leashes and an oversized rock are pulled as tight as they go. “I just don’t see why it has to hurt.”

“Regina says all magic has a price.”

“What, are you the president of her fan club now?”

“Says the one who’s always getting his drool on Basilio.”

“Well, he’s prettier than Laverna. Not like I’ll ever get to see him again, now that you’ve fucked that all up.”

Emma shoots him a look, and then stomps farther down the beach. She can feel the faint pull just behind her collarbone, the ache that Max must be sharing as he paws the beach in irritation, but she keeps going. A few steps more, and the ache grows to a strong pain, enough to make her grit her teeth and struggle into the shallow water. Max is growling on the shore.

“I don’t like this,” he says, and she can hear it more in the back of her head than she can in her ears, now that he is far enough away.

“You’ve made that clear, bud.” The next step is excruciating, and her breath gives. She gasps, bites down onto her lip, _hard_ , enough to draw blood, and falls onto her knees in the water. She’s happy the sun still hasn’t risen, because here she is, down on her hands and feet in the shallows of the town beach, looking like the bad end of a rough night. Max whines and the leashes snap, and then he is there in the water next to her, licking her temples. 

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Max says, and he’s nudging her with his head, getting her back onto her feet. “But I told you so.”

 

 

 

 

There’s a dark shape on the hill, low to the ground and lithe in its movements. Emma looks up to see a tail switch and move out of sight, and Max sniffs the air, stands alert.

“Looks like we got company,” Emma whispers, but Max relaxes.

“It’s only him,” he says, and there’s no question who he means.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Basilio comes back just after dawn, settling himself onto the floor as Regina is starting the coffee. 

“The savior was out this morning. They are practicing at separating themselves, she and the coyote.”

Regina ignores that her hands have curled instinctively, something in her chest throbbing faintly, playing at her interior with its own rhythm. She steadies her fingers on a teaspoon, sets her mouth into a frown. “And why do I care what the savior is doing?”

He turns his head in her direction, those bright gold eyes unrelenting. “There is no use in lying to someone who shares your thoughts, Regina.”

 

 

 

 

Robin comes in the afternoon, to gather the last of his things. At first, she resolves to stay upstairs with her bedroom door closed, but he knocks instead of letting himself in. Basilio has gone for a walk, unwilling to face Elvina. She feels naked without the jaguar at her side, without his fur to bury her fingers in so they don’t make fire at the tips.

“I want to apologize,” he says, when he’s standing in her foyer with a box of undershirts and socks. Elvina is on his shoulder, her wings close to her body. “But to be honest with you, I don’t know where to begin. I don’t want to have a conversation that hurts us both.”

“So don’t.” She bites her lip, and it only takes another minute before the door is closed behind him. Basilio climbs in the kitchen window and finds her sitting at the table, her head in her hands. He curls up at her feet like a pet, and they stay like that until their shadows stretch across the floor.

 

 

 

 

There’s a knock in the night, and Basilio is the one who pricks his ears and climbs off the bed, pushing the door open with his nose. 

“It’s them,” he says, his ears back. 

Regina pushes her head off the pillow, runs a finger through hair that grows longer every day. She’s refused to cut it for some reason she can’t remember, something stubborn and noble and probably having to do with the person at her door.

The coyote is on her front step, Emma a few paces back, as if she had moved away from the door immediately after knocking. It wouldn’t surprise Regina if there was a motive of indecision in that movement.

“Miss Swan,” she says, and she’s overly aware of the fact that she’s wearing a black slip and nothing else, that she could have pulled on a robe but distinctly did not, that she could have laid in bed and ignored the visitor, but she hadn’t. She’d come downstairs and answered the door and now she’s here, looking Emma Swan in the eye, her heart going off like a gun shot. 

“I’ve got something to say,” Emma starts, and her hands are at her sides, two fists.

“Something that required you to knock on my door at two in the morning?”

“It’s...it’s important.”

Regina makes a vague gesture with her hand, trying desperately to look unmoved even though her chest is pounding, her breath becoming harder and harder to find. “Enlighten me, then.” 

“I’m sorry,” Emma says, and she takes a step closer to the door. “That’s the first thing.”

Regina has to hold her body as still as possible to keep from shaking. She nods, bites down on her lip so she won’t betray anything. “How noble of you to find the least convenient hour of the day to offer an apology.”

“I’m bad at timing. You know I’m fucking bad at timing.” Emma’s got this look in her eyes and Regina’s feeling unwound a little, just over that look. “And because I’m fucking bad at timing, I’m going to do this.”

“Do what?”

And of course Emma takes four very urgent steps forward to place a hand on either side of Regina’s face, to kiss her very hard and very deep and very, very well. 

And of course Regina is a crumbling bridge at that touch, of course she almost slides to the floor from the sheer weight of this moment, from Emma’s hands catching her at the waist now and her own hands finding each other at the back of Emma’s head and of course they both catch into brilliant white flames.

Emma pulls away for a moment, because her own hands are glowing blue and Basilio and Max are entwined on the lawn, their eyes silver and their fur standing on end.

“Fuck,” comes a raspy whisper, but Regina takes a hold of Emma’s shirt and she pulls her back in.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says, and then she bites down on Emma’s bottom lip, like that’s all she’ll ever need.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emma realizes that Regina is the moon, and she’s an astronaut or a moth or something else that needs to be right there, needs to die on her surface. Fuck breathing, she thinks, and pushes Regina up against the door.

The neighborhood will complain the next day about the faint sound of growling, perhaps a fight among daemons, and the insistent howls of a coyote.

 

 

 

 


	2. claws, musk

 

 

 

 

Snow is awake when Emma gets back, Waldemar immediately hopping to Max’s side and stretching up to look the coyote in the eye. He thumps his foot a few times, long ears slicked back.

“Where were you?” Snow asks, and her brow is furrowed, heavy with that maternal concern that always makes Emma’s skin itch. 

“Went for a walk,” she says, dusting off an old excuse from years of inquisitive foster mothers and hall monitors who knew she didn’t have a pass.

“Were you feeling alright?”

“Yeah, fine.” Emma slides her boots off, leaving them at the door like a guest.

Snow sniffs, and Waldemar finally sits back down, ears relaxing in defeat. This is how it goes with them, the infinite push and pull. Snow, who wants Emma to call her ‘mother’ but accepts that sometimes she’s Mary Margaret and sometimes she’s Snow, keeps having to give up, and Emma knows it hurts her, this continual defiance from a daughter she could have raised as a princess, could have raised to be sweet and obedient and outwardly kind. Emma wishes it felt wrong to her, the constant effort to disappoint Snow, but it doesn’t. 

“The baby just fell asleep a few minutes ago,” Snow says, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I think he has an ear infection.”

“Poor kid.”

Leopold’s dozing in his rocking bassinet next to the table, a baby bird curled up on his chest. It’s up to Waldemar and Elain to name the daemon, but their humans are loyal to the old ways, insisting upon a formal naming ceremony from the Enchanted Forest. Emma thinks about how Max was named by an older kid’s daemon in the orphanage, a squirrel’s paw pressed into his forehead while he shifted restlessly. Maximus was the name of the kid’s favorite wrestler.

Snow’s looking between the two of them, Emma’s taut mouth and Max’s pulled back ears, and she sighs a little. Emma takes this as her cue to go to bed. She shrugs, nods at Snow, and heads for the room that she’s supposed to call hers.

Max hops up onto the mattress, turning a few times before throwing himself down. “You know, she’d probably disown us for making out with her sworn enemy.”

“I don’t see how disowning us would be that different from throwing us in a magical tree trunk.”

Max rolls his eyes at her. “She said she was trying to save us.”

“From the woman I just kissed, right.”

The coyote raises his head, and then lets out the canine equivalent of a sigh. “We’re fucked, aren’t we?”

“We’ve been fucked for a while, bud.”

 

 

 

 

Henry’s at Regina’s for the ninth night in a row -- Snow’s former insistence that he spend weekends with his grandparents has lessened significantly since the baby came along -- and asks Emma to come over for dinner. She’s supposed to be doing some kind of training with Charming tonight, anything strenuous to distract her from the fact that thinking about Regina Mills makes her feel drunk and high at the same time, but it’s the kid, so. 

“I know you’re not that busy,” he says, and Almira’s a wolfhound today, carrying Leopold’s baby squirrel on its back. They’ve been tasked with taking Leopold for a walk in the park, and Henry likes to call the baby his uncle, just to make Emma laugh. Max keeps ahead of them, and every once in a while he’ll push the limit, making her chest pinch for a moment or two before he slows down.

“I’m supposed to be saving the world, right? I’m always busy.”

“Not the whole world, just the fairy tale world.”

“Why is that so much worse?” 

Henry chooses not to answer that question, and she chooses not to question herself for treating him like a miniature adult these days. Sometimes he looks like Neal and she wants to push him as far away as possible. Sometimes she recovers a layer of false memories from New York, and Henry feels like a ghost to her. Sometimes she sees how easy it is when he’s with Regina, how he’s so clearly a boy and a son and a loved child, and she wonders what the hell she’s doing here anyway, pretending like giving birth to a kid makes you a mother. 

Leopold’s asleep, a rare respite from the constant screaming he’s been doing lately, and they’re pushing his carriage with a little too much care. “I hope your uncle is teaching you that babies are terrible and should be avoided at all costs. Let’s put off fatherhood for as long as possible, okay?”

Henry gives her a look. “Mom’s already had this talk with me.”

“Oh, okay.” Max is sitting down the path waiting for them, and he turns to look back at Emma, nodding his head towards Almira and the baby squirrel. Henry’s mouth is twisting into a frown.

“Ma, we gotta do something about her.”

Emma feels a few knots untying in her stomach, relooping around her heart and giving it a painful little squeeze. “What kind of something?”

“It’s just not fair, you know?” His hands are balling into fists at his side, and when he notices Max looking, he shoves them into the pockets of peacoat. “The only way everybody else wins is when she loses.”

“That’s how the book was set up, kid. Is it bull? Sure, but this town runs on that kind of old school crap, so we don’t have a way around it.”

“I don’t like the book anymore. Sometimes I wish I had never read it.” Henry’s cheeks are getting redder. “Maybe if I hadn’t found it, everyone would still be happy. Maybe I was the one who messed it all up.”

“Hey,” and Emma stops in her tracks, a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “This isn’t your fault, okay? This shit is a lot deeper than you or me or the stupid book.”

“But you’re the _Savior_ ,” he says, and all of a sudden she can only see the kid at her front door, clinging to the idea of her with sticky fingers.

“Right, how could I forget,” she breathes, and Max bounds ahead of them as far as he can. The pain in her chest makes her lungs seize, but she doesn’t move. She stands still and waits for something inside of her to snap.

 

 

 

 

Dinner could be a lot more awkward, all things considered. Regina won’t look at her and Henry’s an adolescent ball of _concern_ that can’t keep still, and Emma looks between the two of them wondering where exactly she’s supposed to apply this salving balm the whole town expects from her. 

Not that everyone’s daemons aren’t doing the talking for them: Almira shifts into a robin halfway through the meal and goes to roost on the windowsill, watching the table with apprehension. Basilio paces, and then he leaves the room altogether. Max sits at Emma’s feet, occasionally leaning into her calves whenever Basilio glances in his direction.

“You’re being awfully angsty,” Max whispers, once Emma’s excused herself to take a call that doesn’t exist and the backyard is cool and dark and yet never dark enough to hide Emma from herself.

“I care about him,” Emma says, and she wishes she still smoked, because she could use a cigarette right now. “I care about _her_. I want them to be happy.”

“You could try kissing her again.”

She snorts, tries to pretend like that didn’t just send a shock through her gut. “Not sure what that would accomplish.”

“She wants you to kiss her again.” Max gets that sly look, the one that’s more vulpine than canid. “I can tell, from the jaguar and everything. And the way she looks at you, that too.”

“That sounds like a terrible idea.”

He nudges her hand, bumping her with his flank. “My terrible ideas have been responsible for some of our best times, you know.”

She lifts an elbow, showing one of many pocked scars. “Like this one, genius?”

“Well, she probably doesn’t have a knife, so it couldn’t end _that_ badly.”

Emma laughs to herself, something stinging in her throat. “I don’t think Regina needs a knife to do her worst.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emma’s already gone out to her car and Henry’s already hugged her goodbye and Regina’s standing in the kitchen, unable to move. Basilio gives a low growl, glaring at her from where he’s alert in the doorway.

“Are we going to do _nothing_?” He’s got that spark in his eyes that she knows must match her own at times, even if she’s never seen it firsthand. She avoids mirrors when she’s angry. She knows the damage a mirror can do, even the ones with dull and ordinary surfaces.

“There’s nothing to do,” she says, pretending that she means to be here, putting away the dishes and ignoring the blonde in her driveway who makes her whole body feel like smoke and ash and fire. Like a spell, the kind that destroys in order to renew.

“I will speak to the coyote myself, _alma_ , I do not require your permission,” Basilio says, and tosses back his head when he passes her. He still carries the inflections of the old kingdom, the rolled r’s and the long vowels and the formalities that were drilled into them from birth. When she was a queen, there were gold cuffs on his feet, studded with rubies. He would tell her later, once they were here in Storybrooke, that the cuffs always made him feel chained.

Basilio goes out and she tries to focus on the porcelain dish in her hand, but then there’s an ache in her chest and a fluttering behind her ribs -- Basilio’s feelings, shared with hers -- and she gives up. Henry is already in bed and she’ll go to him soon, her prince, the only light in her life, but first she will address this Savior.

“I suppose,” she says, standing at the window of the dilapidated Bug. “That we ought to talk about what happened the other night.”

Emma’s in the driver’s seat, and she peers up at her, her narrowed eyes unreadable. Usually Emma is a book with all its pages torn out, so blatant to Regina that she could reassemble it with her eyes closed. Today she’s not sure what she’s seeing.

“Yeah,” Emma says, her fingers tight on the steering wheel. “We should, probably.”

“At this time,” Regina says, her voice tight like a knot in her throat. “I am not really in a position to be entertaining even the idea of--”

“It felt good, right? The kiss, it felt good.”

Regina hates being interrupted, even by this woman who she was supposed to destroy, who she whispered curse after curse for even in her sleep. But she sighs, folding her arms across her chest and glancing over at Basilio, circling the coyote on the lawn.

“Yes,” she says, and she feels that ache in her chest again. “It did.”

“I want to do it again.”

“Miss Swan,” she says, her mouth so tight and careful because she knows exactly what’s hiding on her tongue right now. 

“I don’t think it would be the worst thing,” Emma says, her voice quieter and softer this time, almost hurt, and Regina can feel the heat at her fingertips. She could, she _could_ , but --

“There are many reasons why it would be the worst thing.” Regina thinks of her towers in flames, men who came to her court and her door and dared to invade her chambers, women who shrieked her name like a curse when they stood at her gates. She thinks of pitchforks and arrows and the way they looked at her even when their rebellions had been quelled, the things she saw plotted in their glares, crouched low in the dark with promises of pain and destruction. “Many, many reasons.”

Emma’s smiling at her now, the attractive little fool. “I can’t think of any, honestly.”

“Then you’re even denser than I’d judged. It cannot happen again, and if you want to be an idiot about it, that’s fine.

“Okay, _fine_ , maybe I am an idiot,” and Emma starts the car up, her coyote pulling himself from Basilio’s gaze and leaping in through the window. “Excuse me for feeling something good and wanting to continue feeling good. Gloom and doom is way better, you’re right.”

Regina doesn’t give her the benefit of finishing the conversation. She turns on her heel and walks back into the house, closing the door behind her. She wants to go upstairs but she freezes in the foyer, waiting until she hears the familiar engine driving away. It takes a minute, but the second it’s out of earshot she goes to her son’s room, pushes away whatever shadow is on her mind, and smiles at him.

“ _Príncipe azul,_ ” she says, and he looks at her just like he did as a toddler, all that trust and love and where would she be without him? Who would she be without this boy to save her every single day?

“ _Príncipe azul es mi abuelo_ ,” he says, and when he laughs he looks like Emma.

 

 

 

 

She has a dream about the Savior and she wakes up wet, her breasts and collarbone flushed red. Basilio lifts his head from the bed, glancing over at her.

“That was unusual,” he says, flexing and unflexing his claws. She shakes her head, pulling the sheets over her shoulders, wanting to pull them over her face and her shame and her past, too.

She used to dream about the Savior when she was still in her castle. Magic dreams, her mother said. Dreams of golden hair and bright swords and fire of all different colors, making her body sore and her mind warm and the days following always much more vivid. Rumplestiltskin, the little imp with his beady-eyed raven and his long, long shadow, he would tell her that such things were a sign of destiny. 

“We keep who we love in our hearts,” he’d say, smiling that wicked smile of his. “We keep who we hate in our very marrow.” And then he’d snap a rat’s spine in half, eating it in front of her as she stared down through the bars of his cell.

To think that now he spends his days mooning over that girl and her little weasel.

 

 

 

 

Henry’s there when she arrives home, a textbook in his lap. His brow is furrowed in concentration, but he yells hello when she gets in. She wants him to think he’s old enough to be left alone, so she never lets him see the protective boundary she casts when she leaves. She waits a moment before she enters the kitchen, letting its purple residue from the unbinding be shaken from her coat.

“You know what I miss?” Henry says, looking up from his book. “I kind of miss school sometimes.”

She smirks. Despite the events of the past year, she’s insisted he keep up his studies. There was some trouble finding her old castle tutor, holed up in his cabin in the woods, sitting with his books and his rat daemon and pretending that the other fairy tales couldn’t find him. Now Henry goes to lessons three times a week and tries to convince Mr. Thatch that he needs lessons in monster fighting as well as geometry. Any shade of normalcy, she’ll take it. 

“This from the boy who told me he preferred Neverland to homework.”

“Mom, I’ve been kidnapped, like, three times. It’s getting old.”

She wants to laugh a little, especially given the way he rolls her eyes and she knows it’s an exact replica of her sarcastic gestures, but there’s a twinge in her stomach and she cannot think about how many times they’ve tried to take him away from her. She cannot fathom how close she’s come to losing him, even when he’s fought back to stay.

“I forgot,” he says, reaching into his pocket for a crumpled Post-It. “Ma called. She wants you to meet her at the town beach today. Something about lessons.” 

Her stomach folds in half. “Oh,” she says. “Did she say anything else?”

“She said nine o’ clock sharp. Which means she’ll probably be there fifteen minutes late.”

Regina has to suppress a smile in spite of the way her hands are itching like they’re before a fire.

 

 

 

 

“I hope you have a decent explanation, Miss Swan.”

The woman and her coyote are standing next to the water, their eyes on the horizon. It’s all very ‘iconic Savior’ and Emma stands with her legs apart like her father and Regina’s hit by so many memories, most of them painful, that she almost wants to turn around and get back in the car.

“I don’t, actually.” Emma looks over at her and Regina wonders if the world is supposed to feel capable of flattening you. “I’m doing this dumb thing I do sometimes, where I follow my gut and I don’t question myself and I see how many cliffs I can jump off at once. It’s mind-numbingly stupid.”

“Well, you’re an idiot.”

“Probably,” Emma says. “Only an idiot would have agreed to be the Savior without ever questioning a bunch of strangers who think indoor plumbing is worth dying for.” 

Regina hides her smirk. “I don’t know that they’d _die_ for it, but it’s certainly a perk.” Basilio is eyeing the coyote. “What do you want, Swan?”

Emma’s hands are on her hips but she drops them to her sides and Regina notices the faint blue along her fingers. “That should be obvious, Regina.”

And, she supposes, it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a moment when they’ve just started: Emma’s lowering Regina onto the backseat of the car and she can’t believe that she’s being so _tender_ , that she puts a hand behind Regina’s head and she makes direct eye contact and she bites down on her own lip, like she knows the words on her tongue are all too ready to slip and they’re too heavy, they’re big and precious and she’s terrified they’ll fall out of her mouth and put a hole through the bottom of the car, maybe all the way through the world. 

“If you’re not, uh,” Emma starts, and she’s sure she’s turning red, even in the dark. Regina Mills does that to her, takes the scarred bounty hunter who hated emotional confrontation and makes her fucking blush. “We can go slow if, if this is your first time with a, um, you know,” and she sweeps her hand down her front, feeling awkward even as she’s hovering over her, knowing how close Regina’s lips are.

Regina’s smile is practically sheepish. “I’ve done this before,” she says, biting her lip.

Emma laughs. “So have I.” She pauses before kissing her, a thought caught like a seed in her teeth. “Wait, but isn’t that super taboo in fairy tales? I thought that--”

Regina groans, pulling her down by her neck. “Enough,” she hisses. “And don’t be too gentle,” she adds, and Emma isn’t.

 

 

 

 

They fuck like their lives depend on it. It happens when Henry’s not home, or when Snow and Charming are out and Regina can cast aside enough disgust to hike up her skirt in Emma’s room. It turns out the seat of the Benz can fully recline. 

But mostly they fuck in Regina’s room, where it is fucking and it is something else, something Emma knows would be called making love by people who were less jaded and more optimistic than the either of them. Basilio leaves claw marks down the side of the bedroom wall, that’s how _good_ it is, that’s how much Regina writhes against her, her nails scoring Emma’s back. She’s never been with someone who demands she break her in half every night. She’s never gone so tenderly to the work of tearing someone apart.

Regina’s riding her hand, her knees on either side of Emma’s lap, a steady stream of _más adentro, más adentro, así_ in Emma’s ear. 

“Fuck,” Emma says, because something is dripping down her arm. She glances down and sees her free hand that grips at Regina’s waist to hold her upright, and there are white flames there, licking at her fingers. “ _Fuck_.”

“Don’t worry,” Regina says, in between gasps. 

“Is that supposed to happen?”

Regina pauses in her grinding to grab Emma by the back of her head, hair tangled between fingers that are definitely _on fire_ , except Emma doesn’t understand why nothing burns, why the fire doesn’t catch. “Yes,” she says, and then Emma thrusts up and her head falls back, releasing a growl shared by the jaguar. 

Emma uses the flaming hand to fuck her this time. Regina stops speaking English for a while.

 

 

 

 

They end up in the same aisle of the pharmacy. 

“Hey,” Henry says, waving. Almira flutters towards Max, and when she lands on his back, he tosses his head up, grinning his coyote grin at the chickadee. Regina looks up from the shelves, narrows her eyes when she smiles. The jaguar’s tail switches. 

Regina’s wearing an uncommonly thick scarf, Emma notices. No questions to be asked there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regina’s never been to bed with this much power before. Of course, there were the occasional casters who might have been able to make a few sparks behind the throne, chambermaids who stirred up a trick when they touched her, but Emma is something else, something in a category of its own. Sometimes she will walk into a room and her glance is a dozen hands on Regina’s hips, her breasts, something dancing between her thighs. She’s learned to move a few fingers and bring Regina to tears with the heat of sensation. One day, there is a binding spell, accidental in some ways, perhaps not in others, and Emma remains inside her for an hour, their breaths completely matched, all of their sensations shared. Regina runs a finger across her own breast and Emma shivers. Emma licks her lips and her own are wet.

Regina was brought up in the magic of pain, destruction, annihilation, and this Savior, this woman who still can’t control a flame in her hand, she conjures in pleasures. 

Magic lessons start to take on a new meaning altogether.

 

 

 

 

“You know we can’t keep this up much longer,” she says, and Basilio growls, glaring up at her. There is tea balanced on her knees, pulled up to her chest like she is a child again, hiding from her mother. The kitchen is silent, except for the hot breath of the jaguar.

“That is not for you to decide,” he says, and gets to his feet beside her. “You rush things too much, you ensure their failure and then weep when it comes.”

“Because I know,” she tries, but he shakes his head.

“ _Alma,_ ” he says, calling her by the name they’ve used for each other since they could speak. There’s still sweetness in the voice of her daemon, in spite of the exhaustion that lingers there, too. “She has offered herself --”

“She isn’t ours to have.”

“In the old world, you were a queen. All was ours.”

Regina has to laugh at this, the saddest and meanest and worst laugh. It hurts, to hear that noise from her own lungs. “I would have killed her in the old world. I wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment.”

Basilio sighs before he leaves her. “We cannot say what we would have done. You were not you. She would not have been her.”

“I don’t --”

“Clinging to the old world has done nothing but hurt us. This place is different. This time is new.” When she starts to protest, he shakes his head, prowls out of the room. “Let it be new,” she hears him say, in the back of her head.

 

 

 

 

It takes a few times before she lets her see her fully undressed. Emma’s against her headboard and Regina straddles her, slowly unbuttons her white blouse, pulls the silk shift over her head. She sees the hunger in Emma’s eyes, but she sees something else there, too. Is it care, she wonders, and then she allows herself to trust, and undoes her bra. Emma’s breath catches, and Regina feels that somewhere behind her sternum, the same feeling that’s making Emma’s fingers glow blue.

“Queens are taught not to bare themselves,” she says, and Emma reaches out a single finger, looks to her for permission before she traces it down the center of Regina’s chest, between her breasts, down her navel. 

Later Emma is facedown and Regina is running her hand along her spine, finding the crinkled skin of scars on her back, the white nicks along her arms. Emma turns her head on the pillow, narrating each mark, retelling the story of each difficult bounty, each fight gone wrong.

“I still remember what you said about scars that time,” Emma says, and Regina traces circles on her shoulderblades, traces the shape of spells she thought she’d forgotten.

“I say a lot of things about scars,” Regina says, and in the corner, Basilio is licking all of the coyote’s old wounds. It feels right, which is why she knows it cannot last. Basilio pauses and looks over at her, meets her eye when the thought passes, but then the coyote is nipping at his ear and he returns to the task with joy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regina’s just thrown a hair dryer out the window -- and then used magic to retrieve it, dust it off, and replace it on her dresser -- while Emma’s pacing, her hands balled at her sides, watching and waiting and hating this. There was no world in which they did not fight. There is no universe where they don’t have to confront this and yell about it. It doesn’t mean she wants to, not really.

“You’re convinced this whole thing will go wrong,” she starts, but Regina’s already put up a finger, cutting her off.

“You don’t believe me, fine,” Regina says, and it’s that tone that Emma wishes she didn’t know, the tone of someone trained to be a queen. “Let me explain how this goes wrong. Someone, _anyone_ , finds out that this happened, and I am the villain all over again. I am the evil seductress. You will never have agency in their eyes. Maybe they’ll give you the honor of being a traitor, but at the worst, you’re another victim I used. This will never be an even ground to them. This will never be the right choice. It doesn’t matter where I am; so long as they are my witnesses, I am the Evil Queen, and you are the Savior that failed them.”

“So fuck them. _Fuck_ them. I don’t owe them anything.” Emma has to stop herself from slamming a fist into the wall, because she’s done that before and she knows it hurts but fuck, _fuck_ , she wants somewhere to bury the frustration right now and hot pain is just as decent as anything. “I don’t want this whole fucking Savior gig anymore. I’ve tried to be good at this but I’m not.”

Regina snorts. “You don’t have a choice. Do you want to be the one they’ve counted on all this time, only to let them down?”

“Trust me, I have a fucking doctorate in letting people down.”

“How mature of you.”

Emma rolls her eyes, all the tension in her body making her fists burn blue. “Right, and you don’t have a temper tantrum every time something doesn’t go your way.”

“Considering how many times that happens, it’s difficult to argue that I ever have a chance to feel other emotions.” Regina has this way of making Emma feel stupid for saying whatever it is she just insisted on saying. It works, even when it’s a ridiculous excuse. She collapses onto the bed, staring at Regina like she’s the last way out, and in a way, she is.

“It’d be different if we weren’t here, wouldn’t it? You, me, and Henry, nowhere near this sorry shithole.” Emma thinks about Boston, about how she misses her apartment sometimes and her other clothes and that stupid dive bar down the street. Maybe she would have met Regina there, or more likely, at some upscale bullshit place she was working, and maybe they would have hit it off, maybe she would have used one of her bad lines and they could have kissed in the alley and fucked in her apartment and no one would have thought it was the Savior and the Evil Queen, maybe it would be --

Regina’s fingers hug her temples. “It’s not worth wondering, Emma. Don’t torture yourself.”

 

 

 

 

So they don’t talk for a while, and it hurts. Emma drinks enough for Snow to notice, for a few concerned discussions to happen while Emma’s not paying attention and Charming’s making her sit down at the table, like this is a family discussion.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately,” Snow says, sounds too much like the mother Emma tried to avoid, the one she never got and didn’t want anyway. “You seem very unhappy.”

“Is the Savior obligated to be a fucking ray of sunshine, too?”

Snow furrows her brow, the rabbit in her lap pulling his ears back in slight hostility. “That’s unnecessary, Emma.”

Max is already out the door, and it’s the farthest he’s been so far. Her chest pulls, it stings and it _aches_ , but fuck it, she’ll let it happen. She’ll let it hurt until it breaks in half.

“We just want what’s best for you,” Snow is saying, and Emma closes her eyes, feels Max’s howls in her goddamned bones.

 

 

 

 

She’s there, just where Emma knew she’d be. The same bench next to the beach, and even in the fog she can see where Basilio is pressed against Regina’s calves, Regina’s fist in his fur. Emma and Max make eye contact, and Emma nods, seeing the decision already made in the coyote’s expression.

“Is this seat taken?”

Regina gives Emma a look like it’s the worst line she’s heard, and maybe it is, but she still slides over. Basilio glances at the coyote, just for a minute, enough to betray his vulnerability.

“Hey,” Emma says, and holds out her hand. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

Regina is now clearly rolling her eyes. “Miss Swan, you’ve got to be--”

“ _No_ , we haven’t met.” Emma keeps her hand outstretched. “I’m Emma Swan. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss...?”

And Regina gives in, just a little bit, just enough, and she takes Emma’s hand. “It’s Ms., actually. Ms. Regina Mills.”

“Regina Mills,” Emma sits back against the bench, grinning. “You from around here?”

Basilio settles himself onto the sidewalk, tail switching. Regina releases her grip on his fur. “No, I’m not.”

“That so,” Emma says, and she slides her other hand towards Regina’s, opening her palm. Regina looks down at it, and then at Emma, and Emma has to hold back her grin when their fingers close around each other. “Me neither.”

“It’s not a town I’d like to be from,” Regina says, softly.

“In that case,” Emma says, and she squeeze Regina’s hand, tight but not too tight, enough to anchor them both. “What do you say we blow this popsicle stand?”

Max licks Basilio on the cheek, and the jaguar, _well_. He purrs.

 

 

 

 


End file.
